Last week, my husband bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies – crispy and crunchy. Later in the week, he bought a bag of brownie chip cookies – soft and chewy. And so the tale begins.

The chocolate chip cookies really hit the spot with a warm cup of tea. Little by little the cookies began to disappear, and the few remaining cookies were looking lost in the bag, so I placed the three lonely chocolate chip cookies in the bag with the brownie chip cookies. That was a bad move; the next day, my crispy, crunchy cookies were soft and chewy just like the brownie chip cookies. I should have known better because when I bake chocolate chip cookies, I always store them in a tin because I prefer them crispy.

Now there isn’t anything really bad about chewy cookies; it’s all in the mouth of the beholder. Some prefer crispy, crunchy; and some prefer soft and chewy. But this cookie conundrum got me thinking about the moral of the cookie tale.

Be careful what and whom you surround yourself with because the more you are around places or people the more you can find yourself taking on those characteristics – good or bad. Don’t let your surroundings turn you into someone other than the person you were meant to be – the best version of yourself.